Rating: 3 stars
Headline: A beautifully illustrated children’s book featuring a magical journey and educational farm animal facts
Review:
An Extraordinary Enchanted Birthday by the anonymous author “Professor Stork” (illustrated by Patricia Wilson and Len Peralta) is a children’s picture book. It follows the story of Evy Loe, a young child who wakes up on her birthday filled with the excitement of an upcoming visit to an art gallery with her father. On arriving at the gallery, Evy discovers a pair of magical glasses which will takes her on a magical journey to learn all about life on the farm and all the colourful characters that inhabit it.
This is a nice children’s book, carried massively by the quality of some of its illustrations. The general structure of the book follows a repeated pattern of Evy meeting a farmyard animal and then a full page portrait of the animal with a captioned fun fact for younger minds. The portraits are beautifully executed and carry all the marks of having been completed by a professional artist. The other imagery around it, particularly of the human characters, comes across as slightly more cartoonish. Both types of artwork support the other favourably.
There are place in the book where an overuse of copy might make the content a harder sell to younger children with limited attention spans. Some of the fun facts for each animal are also a little questionable, such as for the cow, with the quote, “cows are job creation machines. The milk they produce creates thousands of jobs in the milk and cheese industries”. While objectively this might be correct in America, where the book has been initially published, for an international audience facts like these might not always be true. In this instance, it also reads a little bit like the line is sponsored by a third party, although this could be a purely personal take on a throwaway line of copy.
An Extraordinary Enchanted Birthday is a fun book for younger readers and their parents, serving as good introduction to some of the colourful animal characters found within farmyard and agricultural settings.
AEB Reviews
Links:
Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “An Extraordinarily Enchanted Birthday” by Professor Stork
Purchase Link: “An Extraordinarily Enchanted Birthday” by Professor Stork (Amazon)
Author Website: Professor Stork
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